Mr. Crypto Market Never Liked Bitcoin SV (BSV)

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One would think that the beating that Bitcoin SV (BSV) has taken the last few days was due solely to a crypto community collective hatred of Craig Wright. One would be wrong. A price comparison between Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and BSV since the fork of Nov. 15 reveals a deeper problem that BSV has. The market doesn’t like it.

In the days leading up to the Bitcoin Cash fork, there were plenty of signs the market wasn’t feeling good about BSV. Bitcoin Cash had rallied in the weeks before, but in the final week had fallen back to $420.64 on the 15th, erasing the 50% gains of the previous weeks. Likewise, Bitcoin dropped 12.4% the day before the fork. This event marked the march down to the yearly low on Dec. 15. Many have cited this toxic battle between the BSV faction led by Craig Wright and the BCH faction led by Roger Ver and Jihan Wu as the reason for the entire crypto market dropping to its (hopefully) final bottom.

But the combined price of BCH and BSV since the fork is revealing. Just after the fork, on Nov. 20, the price of BCH was $220.62 and BSV $49.68 for a combined $270.30. By Dec. 15, that total combined price was $141.95, a decline of 47.5%. But BCH took the brunt of that loss. At just $76.02, BCH was down a shocking 65.6%, and BSV was actually up 32.7% to $65.93 and nearly at parity with BCH. Bitcoin was down in that same period 41.5%, comparable to the BCH/BSV combined price. Arguably, whatever Craig Wright and the BSV team were doing in their war against BCH was working.

But that all changed in 2019. BCH has gained throughout the year so far, with a particularly strong rally beginning on April 1. The total gain for BCH since that Dec. 15 low is 305%. How did BSV fare in the same period? While BCH was one of the strongest coins in 2019, BSV has languished at almost the same value it had on Dec. 15. As of today, it’s down 9.3% since Dec. 15.

But to characterize the disparity between the two forks of Bitcoin Cash as a result of the recent backlash against Craig Wright and the delistings of BSV wouldn’t be correct. At the beginning of the April Fool’s rally, BSV was $65.03, almost the same price as on Dec. 15. It hadn’t moved at all while BCH had huge gains, and the crypto market benchmark BTC gained 65.8%. We have also seen similar gains among altcoins since the low. And while BCH has mostly retained the gains from the rally, BSV went back to where it began.

So BSV can claim neither that the whole market was weak or that sentiment against Craig Wright was to blame for BSV’s poor performance this year. Its value hasn’t changed since the low of 2018, while the rest of the market has moved on. BSV has bigger problems than Craig Wright’s leadership. Apparently, the market likes Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision about as much as the community likes Craig Wright.